“Our most spontaneous audience” Watercycle in film: Part One

Tue 11 Aug 2015

We’re mid-way through our most ambitious education project to date, Watercycle – visiting 9 towns and cities across England and reaching more than 10,000 young people. So, a good moment to take stock and see what’s been happening to date.

OAE TOTS: What we played

Mon 23 Mar 2015

We recently performed Pitter Patter Raindrops, the latest incarnation of our OAE TOTs concerts at Southbank Centre and The Anvil, Basingstoke. To those that came: thank you. We had great fun and hope you did too.

A salute to feathers, furs and fins

Thu 6 Mar 2014

The past month at the OAE has been filled with various animal-related hilarity, involving two of my favourite education events so far; OAE TOTS Animal Time, and the Carnival of the Animals family concert.

850 children, 4 days, 3 projects

Fri 6 Dec 2013

Wednesday 3 Dec 2013This morning I woke up tired. Really tired. End of term tired. It took me a while to figure out why, seeing as we are only at the beginning of December, it was extra hard to drag my body out of bed on a Wednesday morning. Then I conceded that perhaps it was the three huge education events we’d had in as many days.

New season brochure 2013-2014

Fri 17 May 2013

The time has come to unveil our new season brochure.This year we went for a purely visual approach, developed with our designers Harrison and Co and photographer Eric Richmond, which has a slight retro feel, using geometric shapes combined with a simple two tone palette.

Music for now, for later, for ever – Anthem and the RPS!

Tue 14 May 2013

The inspiration for the OAE’s Anthem project came from watching David Walliams complete a sponsored cycle ride, from one end of the country to the other, about five years ago. It made me think how could we pass the baton in sound? How could we unite our partner cities in a large scale project and invite new cities to join the OAE community, through baroque music?

OAE Tots go Strings: what you heard

Mon 15 Apr 2013

We had great fun in our OAE Tots go Strings concert on Saturday and hope you did too. If you’d like to know a bit more about what we played, read on:

Most of our concert was made up of Telemann’s Don Quixote pronounced ‘Don Keyshot’. See what we did there with our donkey theme! This is a wonderful suite (collection of short pieces) by Telemann based on the 17th century Spanish story. A while back, Richard Strauss was credited with writing programme music depicting stories in music, but you can see Telemann was at it about 200 years earlier.

This story is about the adventures of Don Quixote on his horse Rosinante, accompanied by his peasant squire Sancho Panza on his mule (that donkey theme again). Telemann’s pieces are titled Overture, The Awakening of Don Quixote, His Attack on the Windmills, His Amorous Sighs for Princesse Dulcine, Sancho Panza is Mocked (tossed in a blanket), The Gallop of Rosinante, The Gallop of Sancho Panza’s Mule, Don Quixote at rest.

Donkey crept through the woods to part of the ‘Surprise’ Symphony by Haydn (second movement) and Teddy Bears’ Picnic was an arrangement by one of our own OAE viola players, Annette Isserlis.

The presenters for this concert were Cecelia Bruggemeyer and Susie Carpenter-Jacobs. And special thanks to our very willing and enthusiastic Education Officer Ellie Cowan, for her donkey work.

We look forward to seeing you again at future events. Check out our Education pages for events coming up soon.

OAE TOTS: Going on a Journey (with hats this time)

Tue 18 Sep 2012

As part of the Kings Place Festival at the weekend, we hosted two TOTS workshops, led by violinist Hetty Wayne and bassoonist Rebecca Stockwell. Ticket holders were told to bring a hat as we were all going on a journey and our audience didn’t disappoint us, we saw many splendid hats during the day. My personal favourite was a full lion’s mane donned by an enthusiastic toddler, closely followed by a gloriously oversized homemade newspaper hat that was often put on dad for safe keeping.

During the workshops, Hetty led everyone on a magical adventure to discover more about the violin and the bassoon. The attentive audience were encouraged to sing, dance and join in with the music which included:

Not only were we impressed by the brilliant listening from our audience of under 5 year olds but we were also very impressed at the excellent participation from Mums, Dads, Grannies and Grandpas (who had also bought their own hats)! My only regret was that I’d forgotten my hat, not that I can ever fit my hair under one…

Greenwich TOTS playlist

Fri 10 Aug 2012

Thank you to everyone who joined us and jumped, danced, sang, bumped and rowed their way round Europe with us at our TOTS Concert in the Little Top at Greenwich Summer Festival last Saturday (4 Aug). What an amazing atmosphere…

For those of you who’d like to listen again to anything we played, here’s the programme as promised:

TOTS playlist

Tue 3 Jul 2012

It was wonderful to see, and hear, so many of you at our Tots workshops last Sunday at the Royal Festival Hall. If you grown-ups would like to know what you heard and maybe listen again at home, here’s a summary.

Going on a journey with OAE Education

Fri 22 Jun 2012

I’ve been lucky enough to see loads of the wonderful Education work we’ve been doing over the last few months: going to Hastings to watch a fabulous Anthem for a Child concert, taking part in workshops at a special needs school in south-east London and going on a journey with OAE TOTS at the Southbank Centre (as well as lugging children’s instruments to/from school and shepherding schools into Kings Place)! And, I have to say, kudos to our Education team Cherry and Ellie- the logistics of organising so many different projects is exhausting to even think about and they’re still smiling after every event!

Tonight, they’re taking the Anthem tour to Old Spitalfields Market at 6pm with home-grown young musicians from Tower Hamlets and CM Sounds.

Then, they’ll be travelling across to the Southbank Centre on Sunday 24 June for two free OAE TOTS workshops at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the Sounds Venezuela festival…

And on Monday 25 June, the Anthem tour will be on the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall for a free concert at 5pm, where children from across London will perform the two specially written Anthems by composer James Redwood.

Finally, the whole project comes to an end on Friday 29 June at Cecil Sharp House where OAE musicians will be joined by local London primary schools and groups from the nationwide Anthem tour for a final sing and send off.

Wow. Those girls deserve a medal, or at least a well-earned rest after all that!

For full information on what happened on the Anthem tour and to watch a video about the project, visit our Education pages.

OAE Tots

Wed 14 Sep 2011

So how old were you when you first heard professional musicians live?

You’re never too young to experience the OAE, as I and Rachel Beckett (recorder player and flautist) showed last Sunday, when more than forty 2 and 3 year olds had their first taste of baroque favourites.

The ethos of the OAE education programme is that every project is inspired by the orchestra’s core repertoire. These workshops at King’s Place were no exception, including music by Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann and of course J. S. Bach.

I absolutely love working with this age-group. Their responses are so immediate and truthful. They don’t yet know how to hide boredom or fain enthusiasm. When you could hear a pin drop as woolly dog introduced the recorder, I knew our young audience was hooked.

The story of The 3 Billy Goats Gruff was perfect to demonstrate Rachel’s different sized instruments; descant and treble recorders, and mellow flute. What about the bass you ask? The ugly troll of course.

The tots were skipping goats to the Country Dance from Handel’s Water Music, sleepy goats to the slow movement of Vivaldi’s Il Gardellino Concerto, and dancing goats to the Badinerie from Bach’s Flute Suite.

As a final climax all were given instruments with which to make quiet ‘mouse’ music, or noisy ‘lion’ music. It may not be what Telemann had in mind when composing Wassermusik, but the Tritons movement works brilliantly to tell Aesop’s Fable ‘The Lion and the Mouse’.

It was Rachel’s chance to weald her sopranino recorder – about as far away in pitch as it’s possible to get from a double bass . It was also a chance for education director, Cherry Forbes and our new education officer, Ellie Cowan to let their hair down as they took charge of the puppets and led a lively chase across the room.

The only problem…finding the best angle to get a photo of your tiny tot next to a huge double bass.